Technical Tuesday – 12 February 2013 – Are We There Yet? . . . Security and the Cloud by Dr. Susan Cole of Exceptional Software Strategies, Inc.

Many organizations are moving to the Cloud. The reason is obvious: it can create a huge cost savings. Depending on how moving to the cloud is implemented, companies can save on system administrator resources because software no longer needs to be installed locally, and servers no longer need to be managed locally. System administrators are also freed from deployment and maintenance activities and can now focus on more strategic objectives of the company.

That’s quite a lot of benefit. But with that benefit also comes some security concerns.

Cloud providers present a customized view of what they offer and expect Companies to figure out the differences: There is no consistency in both terms and measurement of reliability. Terms include uptime, resilience and/or availability but are not clearly defined. Time periods range from hours, days, weeks to years depending on the SLA. There are different “guarantees.” Some are related to response time and others to resolution time.

If the cloud provider fails, what time frame can companies expect to be back up and running? Will data be lost? What happens if the data cannot be restored? What requirements did the cloud provider have to back up the company’s data? What if the company cancels its service with a cloud provider? What guarantees does the company have that the cloud provider did not retain any of their data?

The information at risk is corporate proprietary data as well as personally identifiable information (PII). Companies need to ensure they are performing the right level of due diligence required for this technology. Its benefits are great, but so are the risks.

Presented by: Dr. Susan Cole of Exceptional Software Strategies, Inc.

Dr. Susan Cole is a 2008 graduate of the University of Fairfax with a PhD in Information Assurance. She received her MBA from Salem International University (2007), her MA from American University in International Politics (1995), a BA from Wilson College in Foreign Languages (1994) and an AA in Mandarin Chinese (1997). For her PhD, she studied what influences the decision making process for IT and IA managers in their recommendations to adopt and implement new security technology in their organizations. The specific technology she researched was Biometrics. She has also achieved and maintains certification as a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP) and recently obtained her Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK). She’s held numerous positions from IA Policy writer for an enterprise to a member of an Incident Response Team. She is also an adjunct faculty member with Colorado Technical University. Lately, she’s become more and more involved with Cloud Security.

Presentation Slides

You can view Dr. Cole’s presentation slides here.